EXPERIMENTS: Houston science students watch as their projects disintegrate in blast

Disappointed young scientists from three Houston schools lost experiments aboard the International Space Station-bound rocket that exploded Tuesday.

Ten current and former students from the Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory School of Houston who worked on their projects last academic year - including four graduates - were with chaperones as they watched the craft ascend from its Wallops Island, Va. launchpad.

The group, which had a clear view from a visitor's center about 7 miles away, was evacuated safely after the rocket blew up and became a fireball shortly before 5:30 p.m. Houston time.

"The blast was pretty enormous," science teacher Greg Adragna said. "A few seconds into the launch, there was a flash and then the explosion."

He added that he could feel the vibration and that the smoke "blotted out the stars" in the night sky.

Group members already had been let down Monday when the launch at the NASA facility off the Eastern Shore of Virginia was scrubbed because a sailboat entered a restricted area.

"It's not the first disappointment I've seen in science, but I'm disappointed for the kids, of course," Adragna said. "I know that failure is a part of science, but I really feel for my students."

Other Houston institutions with projects on the rocket were Awty International School and Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls school on the city's west side.

Cristo Rey's students participate in work-study with local companies to earn money to partially pay for their educations.

One experiment was designed to test the effect of microgravity on how lipid mimics self-assemble. The other aimed to determine the influence of microgravity on the orientation and group consciousness of slime molds.

The work was conducted in partnership with NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which manages the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory.

"The payload was supposed to be returning early in December and we were going to analyze the data and see if we could draw any conclusions. This was about a year-and-a-half of work," Adragna said. "This is not the way we wanted to have the evening end."

NASA officials late Tuesday expressed regret for those who had experiments aboard.

Duchesne projects were created by students who were in the fourth and eighth grades during the last school year. Officials said in a statement that they did not view the explosion as a loss.

"The amount of learning that occurred as a result of being part of this program ... is incredible and the students and their teachers, Kathy Duquesnay and Susan Knizner, should always be proud of this accomplishment," said Tony Houle, Head of the Middle School.

Other Texas students also observed their work disintegrate in the air.

Students at Hobby Middle School in San Antonio, who gathered at the city's Northwest Side campus, also viewed the ill-fated launch.

But the school's principal, Lawrence Carranco, described the students as "resilient." In fact, they were asking about doing another experiment - despite seeing theirs destroyed.